


The Potential for Everything

by alocalband



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Christmas, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Feelings Realization, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, M/M, New Year's Eve, Roommates, Thanksgiving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-27 23:31:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13258899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alocalband/pseuds/alocalband
Summary: They’ve been roommates for exactly one hundred and seven days and four hours before Nursey realizes he doesn’t hate it.It hits him at about exactly the same time as he realizes that Dex doesn’t seem to hate it either.





	The Potential for Everything

They’ve been roommates for exactly one hundred and seven days and four hours before Nursey realizes he doesn’t hate it.

It hits him at about exactly the same time as he realizes that Dex doesn’t seem to hate it either.

They’ve got another week before the Thanksgiving break, and Bitty is in full Hausgiving Prep mode. And, whether due to his status as captain, or simply due to the inability of any of them to ever say no to the guy, he’s managed to enlist just about every single member of the hockey team into helping in some way.

The weather has been cold and sharp, on the precipice of a first snowfall that always seems right around the corner but still hasn’t hit. Dex is insistently stingy about the heating bill, and since he’s the only one of them that could fix the radiator if it ever broke, no one questions his dominion over it. Not even Bitty, though he still grumbles about the fact that he has to wear three different layers when _inside_.

“You practically live at Jack’s anyway,” Dex rolls his eyes, but his tone is light. Lighter than Nursey would’ve thought it capable of just a few short months ago. “When you spend more than two nights in a row sleeping here, _then_ you can have a say in the adjusting of the thermostat.”

Bitty points a wooden mixing spoon in Dex’s direction menacingly, though the threat is belied by his smile. “Remind me again who has seniority around here, _William_?”

“Remind me again who’s the only one around here who knows how to turn off the hot water _and_ the wifi whenever he feels like it, _Eric_?”

Chowder laughs from the table where he’s pealing apples. Sitting across from him, Nursey, who has been forbidden from ever “helping” in the kitchen ever again, makes himself useful by editing one of Bitty’s essays so that Bitty can focus on food instead of academics.

Not that Bitty would probably be focusing on academics over food either way, but at least now none of them will be on the receiving end of a trademarked Jack Zimmermann disappointed face. How Bitty’s success in school has fallen to the frogs to monitor is anybody’s guess, but nobody’s dared to question it so far.

“Bro, that’s just mean,” Nursey teases. Dex doesn’t look up or pause in rolling out his pie crust at the counter as he throws a cranberry sideways to hit Nursey’s forehead.

Chowder starts laughing again, nearly falling out of his chair.

Bitty sighs and shakes his head around biting back his own laughter. “I don’t know where I went wrong with you boys, I really don’t.”

“Oh come on, we are exactly as swawesomely swawesome as you could’ve hoped for.”

“Exactly as much of a pain in my rear.”

From the living room, Christmas carols start playing, which signals the arrival of Ford, who started wearing red and green the day after Halloween. Dex shoots a beleaguered look over at Nursey, because they are apparently the only two Haus residents who think the Christmas season shouldn’t start until December. Nursey gives him a commiserating roll of his eyes back. And then Bitty starts humming along to Jingle Bell Rock and the two of them break into identical silent laughter.

Nursey kind of wants to carve out a space for himself in this exact moment and live in it for the rest of his life. Surrounded by the smell of baked goods, the laughter and teasing of his friends, and William Poindexter grinning broadly in his direction, a light blush across his freckled cheeks.

And it occurs to Nursey, all at once, a sucker punch that has him suddenly and determinedly staring down at his work to hide his reaction to it, that he’s felt this way all semester. That there is nowhere else he’d rather be, and that this fact is _not new_.

He doesn’t get much done after that, too busy searching his memories trying to pinpoint the when and the how of this current contentment.

It’s not like he and Dex were actively fighting all that much towards the end of the last school year. There were still arguments, and there still are even now, but that’s kind of just how they communicate with each other. Even if Bitty and Chowder don’t really understand it.

But something changed when they started living together. Some wall came down somewhere along the lines and Nursey stopped trying to resurrect it.

From the moment they rock-paper-scissors’d for who got top bunk and who got bottom, and after winning seven rounds in a row Dex just closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose, and said, “If I take the bottom you’ll just try to climb in there with me whenever you’re drunk, so... fuck it. I guess I’ll take the top...”

From the moment they decided they’d take one of their gen ed’s together this semester, even though Chowder couldn’t fit it into his schedule in order to be their buffer, and then spent every dull lecture sitting in the back and passing notes back and forth to keep themselves from falling asleep...

From the moment the weather started to turn cold, and Nursey kept forgetting to dress appropriately on their now weekly walk to Annie’s to study together, and in between all of Dex’s chirps about it was also the casual offer of an extra scarf he just happened to have on hand, or the outer layer jacket he’d slip out of without prompt and throw at Nursey’s face. Around all of Dex’s gruff complaints about Nursey acting like he “ _wants to get sick, I swear to god,”_ was also the occasional, “Looks better on you,” muttered under Dex’s breath with a shrug as he pulled his own beanie down onto Nursey’s head so that it covered the tops of Nursey’s frozen ears, before he just kept on walking like it was nothing...

...Nursey’s felt at home. Not just in the Haus, but _with_ _Dex._

It’s not until later that night, tossing and turning in bed on the way to what will probably be a fitful sleep, that Nursey works up the courage to ask Dex about it.

“Hey, Will?” he whispers, staring up at the mattress above his head and waiting.

Dex sighs. “Should I be worried that you’re pulling out the first names for this?”

“What? No. I mean. There’s no ‘this,’ I just had a question.”

“...Alright,” Dex draws the word out skeptically.

Nursey feels abruptly nervous, but powers through. “So. Like. We’re friends, right?”

“ _That’s_ your question?”

“Um. Yes.”

There’s a long enough pause that Nursey’s nerves start to fray all the further, quickly tipping over into actual embarrassment. But then--

“Yeah, Derek,” Dex answers softly. “Yeah, we’re friends.”

Nursey swallows. “Okay. Cool. Good.”

“Though I feel like I should be offended that you even have to ask that.” Dex snorts a quiet laugh, and it punches a small, unexpected one out of Nursey in response.

“Forgive me for only just now catching up to the fact that you’ve magically stopped hating my mere existence.”

Nursey can perfectly picture the roll of Dex’s eyes that must accompany the huff of breath he gets at that. “Nothing magical about it, doofus. It was just, I don’t know, a lot easier to like you when you stopped trying so hard to be liked.”

Nursey frowns, eyebrows furrowed. “What are you talking about? I don’t--”

“Oh, you definitely do. And it drives me up the fucking wall, man. But then you started to turn it off whenever we were in our room. And after a couple months you started to turn it off just whenever you were around _me_ , even when we’re out in public. And, you know,” Dex shrugs. “You’re not so bad underneath all the forced chill and studied charm.”

It is apparently a day for large realizations, because Nursey genuinely hadn’t even noticed he was doing that.

Sure, he’d made the decision just before moving into the Haus that if he was going to have a roommate again for the first time since Andover, he wouldn’t let it be like it was back then. He wouldn’t keep his untouchable and anxiety-free mask on even in his own bedroom, even in the oppressive dark while falling asleep, that other body in the matching twin bed only a few feet away and capable of, at any second, looking over at where Derek Nurse lay, exposed, and _finding him out_.

No. This time he would treat his home as his _home_. And if any vulnerability got exposed in doing so, well it was just Poindexter. And Poindexter was the last person on the planet whose opinion Nursey cared about. So... fuck it, right?

Except that “fuck it” very quickly became a pretty unnecessary mantra. Nursey doesn’t even have to think about it anymore to let his guard down around his linemate, and it isn’t because he doesn’t care about said linemate’s opinion of him. If anything, the opposite might now be true.

And apparently Dex has noticed.

“Uh, thanks? I guess?” Nursey offers belatedly. “Hey, for what it’s worth, it totally goes both ways. It was way easier to like you when you stopped being such an uptight asshole. So win-win.”

Dex reaches over the side of his bunk and smacks Nursey in the face with his pillow.

Nursey grins.

***

Hausgiving feels somehow... _warmer_ this year than it did the last two. Maybe that’s just because this is the first one Nursey’s attended while living at the Haus. Or maybe it’s that he’s finally starting to let himself feel the full effects of being a member of this particular found family, rather than just another teammate or bro.

Nursey sits at the table sandwiched between Chowder and Tango, directly across from Dex. Bitty makes a toast that leaves everyone near tears, though they all pretend not to notice. Jack shows up halfway through to surprise his boyfriend. Ollie and Wicks create an overly elaborate Mario Kart drinking game for anyone who wants to stick around after the pie’s all gone.

There are five different pies, and not a single one of them gets ignored. But Dex still frowns at the countertop where the crumbs of the demolished pies are all that’s left of them.

“Someone threw mine out.”

“What?”

“All the other empty pie plates are here, but someone threw mine out. I bet it was Bitty. Or Chowder. Probably to keep me from seeing that no one ate it.”

Nursey breathes in deeply and silently counts to ten. Because lately the only thing that gets him immediately and stupidly defensive is anything that has to do with William Poindexter’s secret lack of self-esteem. The guy hides it pretty well behind a veneer of bone dry sarcasm and hair-trigger exasperation, but Nursey has learned to spot how it permeates literally every part of Dex’s day to day life.

And it grates at Nursey to no end. That Dex honestly think he’s somehow subpar compared to the rest of them when he’s really... well. When he’s really anything but, as far as Nursey’s concerned.

“For fuck’s sake, dude, really?” Nursey tries for chill, but a touch of his frustration rings through in his tone. “No one _threw it out_ , oh my god, Poindexter. I hid the _last freaking piece_ upstairs for later before these vultures could try to do the same.”

“Oh.” Dex blinks. He looks genuinely shocked by this information, a light flush coloring his cheeks.

“You may not be Bitty, but you still make a damn good pie, bro.”

Dex ducks his head and grabs the back of his neck. “I just followed the recipe,” he mutters.

Nursey claps a hand on Dex’s shoulder, and then goes one better and just throws his whole arm across Dex’s back and reels him into Nursey’s side. “Come upstairs and watch _Voltron_ with me and I might even share.”

Dex eyes him sideways with suspicion, like he’s trying to figure out Nursey’s real angle here. Which, rude. But also, okay, kinda fair.

But then he glances over at the guys in the living room getting progressively drunker, Chowder already fast asleep across the green couch, Bitty and Jack having disappeared up to Bitty’s room who knows how long ago.

“Yeah, alright.”

Nursey refuses to name whatever feeling blooms bright in his chest. It’s probably just that same warmth he’s felt all day. That same sense of family and belonging and rightness.

But as they crowd together in Nursey’s bottom bunk with the last slice of Dex’s pie and Netflix pulled up on a ipad settled across their laps, Nursey has to wonder if it’s all of that, yes, but also something... more.

Barely a couple of episodes in, Nursey’s drifting in and out of a light sleep. But Dex must keep on watching, because every time Nursey blinks blearily towards a half consciousness, his head is still resting on Dex’s shoulder, and Dex’s arm is still trapped between Nursey’s back and the wall. Dex’s fingers lazily toying with the hem of Nursey’s sweater at his hip.

As tired as he is, he forces himself awake as often as he can just to catch another moment of this. Even if, later on, he’ll be half convinced he dreamt it all up.

***

Being on the receiving end of William Poindexter’s undivided attention is entirely intoxicating, and a little bit addictive, and Nursey doesn’t notice just exactly how much of it he’s been soaking up all semester until he goes home for the short Thanksgiving break and is suddenly without it.

The thing about Dex is that it isn’t his _opinions_ that are black and white, which took Nursey a long time to figure out, it’s that his way of dealing with the world is. He’s either at 100% or zero. On or off. Focused and intense or completely oblivious. A little like Jack, but less obsessive. It’s not that he only cares about _one thing and one thing only_ , it’s that whatever he chooses to focus on at any given time becomes all he sees.

He’s been focusing on Nursey all semester. It’s been intense, but Nursey just hand waved it off as Poindexter being his usual intense self.

Honestly, who was Nursey kidding?

Thanksgiving is spent with his dad’s side of the family, since Christmas is with his mom’s. Nursey is usually a hit with relatives, charming enough that the younger cousins all idolize him, and academically successful enough that his parents and grandparents get to fulfill their yearly quota of bragging rights in a single day.

His sister is typically the more aloof of the two of them, bragged about and shown off just as much as he is, but able to sneak away a lot easier. She’s the family bookworm, quieter and shyer than Nursey’s ever been, even if they share the exact same interests and are both English majors.

Hockey is the major difference between them, he figures. Team sports from an early age did wonders for his ability to socialize and to blend in. But while Nursey spent his youth as much on the ice or on a field as in a book, Sarah hid in her room with her sketchbook and her rotating library and only ever deigned to converse with either her brother or their parents.

This year is different. Because this year it takes Nursey a lot more effort than it normally would to pretend that he wants to be there, rather than back at Samwell with his friends. With Dex.

Which has never happened to him before. He loves his family and he loves the holidays. So he gets why he keeps getting odd looks from everybody, but he can’t quite seem to get his shit together about this.

“Did you get dumped?” Sarah asks him from where she’s curled up in a ball in the armchair across from Nursey with a book half hiding her face. When Nursey doesn’t answer, just sinks down a little further into the cushions of his own chair and pulls his sweater up over his nose, she reaches a leg out to kick his thigh with her socked foot.

The adults are all busy cooking or drinking too much wine while pretending to help cook. The kids are either outside throwing snowballs at each other or camped out in the den watching Peanuts. Nursey could be at home with any of them, but instead he’s hiding with his sister in the study.

Nursey pulls his sweater back down. “No.”

“You’re all contemplative and mopey.”

“Do you really want to talk about my emotional turmoil right now? Or do you want to read your book and pretend you never brought it up?”

His sister loves outs. She lives for outs, whether it comes to conversations or social situations or plans and deadlines of just about any kind. So Nursey isn’t expecting Sarah to very deliberately set her book down on the arm of the chair while maintaining direct eye contact with him, and then raising a pointed eyebrow as if to say, _Your move, buddy._

Despite himself, Nursey laughs quietly. And then he hugs his arms around himself and shrugs a little. “I’m brooding about my roommate. Well. Not _brooding_. Sorting through some shit.”

“Is this, like, ‘gay panic’ shit? Or ‘plotting where to hide the body’ shit?”

“I am perfectly comfortable in my bisexuality, thank you.”

Sarah makes a face. “And I’m happy for you, but please never give me details.”

“You’re the one who brought it up.”

“Okay, whatever, so it’s a murder thing then? You need to figure out how to get away with offing your douchebag hockey bro? I remember you complaining about him all last year.”

Nursey chokes on a hollow laugh. “Yeah, so, funny story. You know how there’s a fine line between--“

“Oh gross. You’re in love with him?”

It’s Nursey’s turn to reach a leg out and kick her with his own socked foot. She’s like half his size and has never seen the inside of a gym in her life, though, so he holds back more than he would if she were one of his teammates. “I didn’t say that. I said I was sorting through some shit. I... miss him. Which is weird. I wasn’t expecting to feel it this viscerally.”

Sarah hums thoughtfully, fingers playing with the pages of her book. “You think he misses you too?”

“I don’t know.”

“You think he’d be an asshole about it if he knew that _you_ _did_?”

“I...” Nursey wants to say again that he doesn’t know, but he does. A year ago he would’ve said that yes, of course Dex would be an asshole about it. Six months ago he would’ve said that it was fifty-fifty one way or the other, depending on the day of the week and Dex’s stress level. But right now? Right now feels like a world away from anything that doesn’t look like a soft if reluctant smile and a fond glint in Dex’s bright eyes.

Things change. People grow. And Nursey's not entirely sure what anything _means_ anymore, but it feels like standing on the precipice of something huge and important.

Nursey swallows and looks down at his knees. “We were both pretty awful to each other when we first met. We both assumed a lot of things right off the bat, and then even when we realized those assumptions weren’t all true, we kept up the show of it anyway. And now... I don’t know what we are without all that. He’s turned being frustrated with me into being overly nice to me so seamlessly and quickly that I didn’t even notice it happened? But it did, and now I feel... stuff. I don’t know.”

“Eloquent.”

Nursey kicks her again. Sarah kicks him back, and it momentarily devolves into a brief free for all before she threatens to throw her book at him and he uncle's out.

Sarah studies him for a long moment, and then sighs. “Look. Just tell him you miss him. See what happens.”

“What if nothing happens?”

“What if _everything_ happens?”

Nursey loses his breath at the implications of either scenario.

Still, he pulls out his phone, and, after several minutes of silently psyching himself up while Sarah rolls her eyes at him from behind her book, he texts Dex. _Happy turkey day! I miss you, man._

It’s exactly as lame as he was trying to avoid, but anything more chill wouldn’t have left any room for truth.

 _It’s only been two days,_ is the near immediate response he gets back. And Nursey quickly starts composing new texts in his head to recover his dignity, his stomach full of lead, when he gets another.

_But hard same. Happy Thanksgiving._

Well. It’s definitely not “nothing.” But Nursey suspects he’s going to have to be a bit braver if he decides he wants the potential for “everything.”

***

The handful of weeks between Thanksgiving and Winter Break are the usual whirlwind of activity, not sparing any of the SMH enough time to think about anything that isn’t finals or hockey. So, while Nursey doesn’t have a whole lot of space in his head right now to actively think about the implications, he still finds himself gravitating to Dex even more than usual. Which is saying something, considering the level of connected-at-the-hip they’ve been all semester so far.

Where once Dex would’ve camped out in the library to study, and Nursey would’ve made camp in a corner at Annie’s, now they hole up together in their bedroom. They start out taking turns at the desk, but then end up, more often than not, sharing the floor, notes and books spread out on the floorboards around them, clad in as many layers as possible to combat the chill.

It’s comfortable in that way that they are with each other during a game, somehow able to anticipate the others presence at every turn. Dex always has an extra pen on hand that he wordlessly tosses to Nursey every time Nursey loses track of his own. Nursey starts up inane arguments every time he can see Dex get a little too lost in his own head, nerves fraying under some imagined stress.

They work well together, so much so that it’s almost easy not to think about it. Just like Nursey’s been not thinking about it up until now.

Whenever he needs a break, Nursey braves the snow for some fresh air and a change of scenery, and he always returns with enough Annie’s for two. Dex only accepts the coffee because Nursey forces weird, hipster baked goods on him along with it and Dex claims the trauma of tasting gluten free pumpkin kale loaf is payment enough.

Even the quiet lulls feel too full for Nursey to bother trying to shoehorn in some bit of introspection about the nature of their relationship. About the warmth that Nursey still feels at being able to sit here on these old, crooked floorboards with his linemate and know there’s nowhere else he’d rather be.

That being said, Nursey’s brain still has a habit of turning itself inside out over shit whether he’s given it permission to or not.

“So. We’re friends,” he says idly one frosty afternoon, keeping his gaze trained on the textbook resting open over his cross-legged lap.

“Oh boy. Here we go.”

“No, I just. Do you think it’s obvious?”

“Obvious to who, Nurse? The viewers at home?”

“Like, do you think Chowder knows we’re friends now? We never explicitly said anything.”

Dex takes a large bite out of the vegan zucchini muffin Nursey bought him, his eyebrows frowning just as hard as his pursed lips as he chews. “This tastes like sawdust,” he says with his mouth still full enough that it comes out garbled.

“Shut up, it does not.”

Dex continues chewing, eyeing Nursey thoughtfully before swallowing. “Do you think Chow needs, like, a formal announcement? That seems weird.”

“I’m not saying I wanna carve our initials into a tree trunk or whatever. But I honestly can’t tell if anyone else on the team knows we’re cool now or not. Hell, _I_ didn’t even know until recently, and I’m _in_ the friendship.”

“You’re also an idiot,” Dex shrugs, taking another bite. He’s totally digging that muffin, even if he won’t admit it. “Why does it matter?”

Nursey doesn’t have an immediate answer to that. Probably because the questions he’s really trying to ask here aren’t ones he’s willing to ask out loud.

What he really wants to ask is: _Am I being obvious enough? Is this really going where I think it is or am I reading too much into it? Can all our friends already tell or is this one more thing about myself that I need to keep hidden?_

Eventually Nursey settles on a version of the truth that feels accurate enough as he says it. “I don’t like the idea that I made it all up. That I’m just imagining that you’ve been, like, nice to me. It would really fucking suck if it turns out we don’t actually like each other.”

Dex’s frown turns from considering to sad to suddenly determined. “Then I guess I’ll have to be nice to you even more often. Until you start believing it.”

Nursey chokes on his own tongue at that, and has to make a quick escape into the bathroom to try to compose himself.

That felt like a declaration. Was it a declaration? Nursey splashes water onto his face, focuses on evening out his breaths, and stares at himself in the bathroom mirror for so long his features start to lose all meaning, the way a word said too many times in a row starts to become just a collection of sounds.

“Fuck it,” he finally mutters down at his hands, both gripping the sink with white knuckles. And then he makes his way out of the bathroom and into Chowder’s room.

Chowder is on his bed, decked out in half a dozen layers of Sharks merch, happily highlighting notes and humming along to the pop music emanating from Bitty’s room across the hall. He looks up with a smile at Nursey’s entrance.

Nursey can’t quite manage one back for him, though. Instead, he drags in a ragged breath and says, “Me and Dex.”

Chowder nods seriously, like what Nursey’s just said was a full sentence instead of an aborted question that Nursey doesn’t know how to finish.

“It’s been good. Us. We--” Nursey waves his hand vaguely, like it will summon the rest of the words he needs.

Chowder’s smile gets a bit brighter. “Yeah! Really good. I’m proud of you guys, you’ve both come a long way. I was kinda worried at first, but you both really stepped up.”

“Yeah. Uh. But like.” Nursey pulls in another deep, shaky breath. “I don’t want to stop?”

Chowder frowns, confused. “Stop being friends?”

“Stop... ‘stepping up.’ Like, I want to keep going. I want Dex to keep going. I don’t want to stop at... at _friends_.”

Chowder’s eyes go wide and his jaw drops a little. “ _Holy shit_ ,” he breathes.

Nursey rubs his palms up and down his thighs, and then runs his fingers through his curls, pulling at the tangles hard enough to ground himself. “I don’t know how to ask him if he feels the same.”

“I mean. You kinda just have to ask him? There isn’t a secret code. If you can’t talk to each other about the important stuff, then the important stuff is going to make a mess of everything before you’ve even begun." Damn Nursey's glad he went to Chowder with this. The guy knows his shit. "Don’t let the reason you’re unhappy be that you didn’t have words for hashing out the hows and whys of being happy.”

“So you do know we’re friends now? We haven’t been living in a weird bubble?”

Chowder rolls his eyes while grinning. The ability to emote equal amounts of adoration and judgement at the exact same time is possibly a skill only he possesses. “I knew you were friends before even you guys did. I think you two were the last people on the entire planet to realize it.”

So that answers that then.

***

That same sense of loss, of _missing something_ , that Nursey felt over the Thanksgiving break is amplified tenfold when he goes home for Christmas. And it’s not just because the length of time he’ll be away is a whole lot longer, but because now he has a name for it. Now, he knows what he wants, and he doesn’t have the same hesitancy as before in admitting it to himself.

He wants Dex. He misses Dex. He _likes_ Dex.

And he has no fucking clue what to do about it.

Christmas comes and goes. Nursey loves his family, but it feels strange this year to enjoy being with them while also wishing he were with his _other_ family too. He’s never before had friends close enough that they could inspire a kind of homesickness in him like this.

It all comes to a head when he notices, the day after Christmas, that Dex managed to sneak a present into the dirty laundry Nursey shoved into his duffel bag to do at home. Leave it to William Poindexter to find a way to give gifts without letting anyone get him anything in return.

It’s wrapped in a combination of newspaper and packing tape, with a single strand of red yarn wrapped once around it and tied into a perfunctory bow at the top.

Nursey swallows heavily and stares at it for a very long time before he manages to work up the courage to unwrap it.

Pens. They’re not even expensive ones or hard to find ones, but they are exactly the ones Nursey prefers. He tends to buy them for himself in three packs at Staples and has to do so practically weekly because of how often he misplaces them.

There are maybe a hundred of them in this box.

The note at the top reads, simply: _Happy Holidays. If this actually lasts you longer than a month, I’ll owe you dinner._

Nursey is tempted to hide half of the pens under his mattress right there and then just to make sure he gets that dinner.

Instead, he pretends that everything is exactly the same as it was before he discovered the present. He enjoys the holiday. He snapchats Dex and Chowder an obscene amount of times, and he texts Dex more often than he would be able to justify to any of his other friends if asked.

To be fair, Dex texts him just as much.

He spends the next several days giving himself room to think things through, and figure out what he really wants, and what he’s willing to do to get it.

The morning of New Year’s Eve, Nursey calls him.

“So. We’re friends.”

Dex groans on the other end of the line. “This again? Really?”

“Shut up. I just. Do you ever feel like, I don’t know, like that’s not _all_ we are?”

Dex sucks in a sharp breath.

Nursey swallows, rough and a little painful. “Or, well. Maybe not yet, but, like we’re maybe in the process of...” Nursey shakes his head and almost drops his phone because his hands are trembling so hard. “You know what? Forget it. Sorry. Fuck. I--”

“ _Yes,_ ” Dex interrupts, and Nursey chokes.

“...Yes?”

“Yeah, I... I know I’m probably not there yet, but I’ve been trying to, like, earn it? This just feels like something we have to work for, you know? And I think I might have to work a little harder, because, I mean, you deserve--Well. A lot better than what I’ve got. So I’ve been trying. And I know it’s not enough yet, I know that, but I’m willing to put in the effort. So, yeah, _yes_ , but I’d understand if you don’t--”

“Holy shit man, take a breath.” Nursey’s not sure he’s ever heard Dex string so many words together all at once before, especially words about _feelings_. Nursey’s heart is pounding hard and fast in his chest, adrenaline spiking in his veins. “Listen, I’m all for putting in the work, but I’m already all in, buddy, alright? I’m there. I’m ready.”

Dex goes quiet for a moment, and then finally asks breathlessly, “You-- Really? You’re sure?”

“So fucking sure, Poindexter. Now, what are you doing tonight?”

“Hanging out at home? Nothing special. Why?”

“Okay good. If I catch the ten AM out of Penn Station, I’ll be in Portland by about seven. Then that’s, what, like an hour drive to yours from there? So I should make it in time.”

“In time for what?”

“New Year’s.”

“Nursey...”

“Sorry, can’t hear you, already buying my train ticket.” Nursey hangs up on him, grinning.

He gets a text an hour later, settling into his seat on the train and trying to stay calm. _I’ll pick you up in Portland,_ Dex says. _Don’t rent a car._

Nursey sends him back a series of emojis that he would feel embarrassed about if he couldn’t immediately see the epic eye roll Dex probably gives in response to them.

 _Nevermind. See you next year_ , Dex sends back, and Nursey laughs out loud.

***

It’s snowing lightly when the train pulls in, and the temperature is cold enough that Nursey’s grateful he thought to bring his parka rather than the peacoat he’s been wearing around Manhattan. The beanie on his head is Dex’s, and the gloves too. Buried in the one bag he brought with him is an unwrapped Christmas present that he picked up on his way to the station, a flash drive that he knows Dex will appreciate the utility of, but which Nursey’s going to upload a personal playlist of music that Dex will pretend to hate but never delete.

Dex is waiting for him in the parking lot next to a pickup truck, his cheeks and nose bright red from the cold, his ears hidden beneath the flaps of the dorkiest trapper hat Nursey’s ever seen. Their eyes lock, Dex smiles, small and full of some fragile hope, and Nursey might fall in love with him a little bit more in that moment.

Yeah. _More_. It’s a kind of exhilarating to think that he’s already been most of the way there this whole time. That same warmth of family and rightness and belonging fills him now as if he were surrounded by the entire team, but intensified to the point that he’s somewhat drunk off of it.

“Hey,” he says, stopping barely a foot away from Dex and already wanting to close the distance, his whole body swaying forward like it’s magnetically drawn to him.

“Hey.” Dex crosses his arms over his chest and smirks. “You know, travelling a few hundred miles just for the shot at a New Years Eve kiss is exactly the kind of romantic gesture that’s completely wasted on me. You could’ve waited until we got back from break and I’d be fine with it.”

“I know this, and I’ve made my peace with the fact that you’re an overly pragmatic stick in the mud. This was more for my own sake. I like a little romance sometimes.”

“Yeah, I figured.” Dex sighs, but it’s infinitely fond, and his body sways forward a little as well, as if he feels the exact same pull that Nursey does. “Next year I’ll come to you.”

Nursey grins and nods. “Next year.”

They both move forward at the same time then, and when their lips meet it’s dry, ice cold, and perfect. Nursey’s fairly certain he’ll be able to remember the feeling of Dex’s freezing nose pressed to his cheek, Dex’s gloved fingers resting gently on his neck, Dex’s stupid hat trapped between their foreheads, for a very long time to come.

“The one at midnight will be warmer,” Dex whispers, the words a cloud of breath in the couple of inches they’ve separated. “I’ll try to make it worth the romantic gesture.”

Nursey kisses him again, quick and firm, and hoping it communicates just how much he appreciates the effort. How much he loves that Dex genuinely wants to _earn_ the ability to be here with him. It's a work in progress, sure, and maybe they aren't there just yet, but he can feel them getting there. He can feel Dex trying, and his own heart catching up. And he can feel that strange homesickness he's been wrestling with all winter break, even though he's technically been _at home_ for all of it, ease, as what he's been missing finally slots into place. “I can’t wait.”


End file.
